3/8/12, "White House Works to Shape Debate Over Health Law," NY Times, Robert Pear
"The White House has begun an aggressive campaign to use approaching Supreme Court arguments on the new health care law as a moment to build support for the measure seen as President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, hoping to shape public opinion on an issue at the center of the battle for the White House and Congress.
On Wednesday, White House officials summoned dozens of leaders of nonprofit organizations that strongly back the health law to help them coordinate plans for a prayer vigil, press conferences and other events outside the court when justices hear arguments for three days beginning March 26.
The advocates and officials mapped out a strategy to call attention to tangible benefits of the law, like increased insurance coverage for young adults. "...
- [Ed. note: Young adults as a group need it least.]
(continuing): "Sensitive to the idea that they were encouraging demonstrations, White House officials denied that they were trying to gin up support by encouraging rallies outside the Supreme Court, just a stone’s throw from Congress on Capitol Hill. They said a main purpose of this week’s meeting, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, was to give the various groups a chance to learn of the plans.
For months, Democrats in Congress and progressive groups have urged the White House to make a more forceful defense of the health care law, which is denounced almost daily by Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates.
Administration officials said that they would much prefer to focus on job creation and the need for clean energy at the moment and that the court arguments were forcing health care to the forefront. But they appear to have decided that they cannot risk allowing the court proceedings to unfold without making sure that backers of the sweeping overhaul will be prominent and outspoken.
Opponents of the law will be active as well and are planning to show their sentiments at a rally on the Capitol grounds on March 27, the second day of Supreme Court arguments. Republican lawmakers, including Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, are expected to address the rally, being organized by Americans for Prosperity, with support from conservative and free-market groups like the Tea Party Express.
At the White House meeting on Wednesday, a wide range of advocates representing consumers and people with diseases and disabilities — as well as doctors and nurses, labor unions and religious organizations — discussed plans to bolster the landmark law, which is being challenged by 26 states as unconstitutional.
Supporters of the law plan to hold events outside the court on each day of oral argument. The events include speeches by people with medical problems who have benefited or could benefit from the law. In addition, supporters will arrange for radio hosts to interview health care advocates at a “radio row,” at the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill. ...
Jennifer M. Ng’andu, a health policy specialist at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic rights group, said White House officials emphasized that the court case provided “a great opportunity to highlight benefits of the law for real people.”...
Just after the law was signed, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, predicted on the NBC program “Meet the Press” that “those who voted for health care will find it an asset, those who voted against it will find it a liability.”
But two years later, public opinion on the law is deeply divided, and polls show significant opposition among Republicans and independent voters in battleground states....
The court is expected to issue its decision in late June, as the presidential campaign enters its crucial final months and Congressional races grow more intense.
Groups working with the White House include the Service Employees International Union; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Health Care for America Now, a consumer coalition that fought for passage of the legislation; Protect Your Care, a nonprofit group created last year to defend the 2010 law; and the Center for American Progress, a research and advocacy group with close ties to the White House.
Eddie P. Vale, a spokesman for Protect Your Care, said White House officials at the meeting “sounded pretty excited about the size and scope” of efforts to promote the law this month.
Levi Russell, a spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, said buses would bring people to rally against the health law from Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, among other states. The theme is “Hands off my health care.”
On its Web site, the Obama re-election campaign describes Americans for Prosperity as a “special-interest front group run by the oil billionaire Koch brothers.” In a recent fund-raising appeal, Jim Messina, the campaign manager, said that the oilmen, Charles and David Koch, were “obsessed with making Barack Obama a one-term president.”
Mr. Russell said, “The Koch brothers were involved in the founding of Americans for Prosperity and contribute to it, but they are just two out of 90,000 donors.”" via Weasel Zippers
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Ed. note: So instead we should have a huge behemoth government and no dissent? The NY Times, La Raza, and SEIU have no worries. If "Republicans" object to ObamaCare "almost daily," why did they stick it in the House Appropriations Committee where it's been "held up" for going on 2 years? Because they love ObamaCare. In Nov. 2010 we gave the GOP House the people it needed to defund ObamaCare and what did they do? Told us to sit down and shut up. The most senior GOP Senate member, McConnell, said from day 1 it would never be repealed. The American middle class is the only one who wants it repealed. We have ObamaCare because the Bush crowd was so vile that there were almost no Republicans left in the House by the end of 2008. As we've found out since then, that didn't bother the GOP, they're very happy being in the minority.
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9/29/11, "Draft spending bill would defund Obama healthcare law," The Hill, Sam Baker
"House Republicans released a draft spending bill Thursday that would cut off funding for many parts of the healthcare reform law, though the bill remains deadlocked in the Appropriations Committee.
The draft legislation would attempt to derail implementation of the law. It would specifically block any money from going to the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight — the office handling the bulk of the implementation effort — as well as the recently disbanded office in charge of setting up the controversial CLASS program.
All told, the bill would rescind $6.8 billion, according to the Appropriations Committee. It would block funding for the Affordable Care Act until legal challenges over the law’s individual coverage mandate have been settled.
But the bill isn’t likely to see a markup any time soon. Although it would cut spending on a wide range of programs within the Health and Human Services Department, its total spending levels are still too high for two of the committee’s Republican members.
The draft bill adheres to the spending levels agreed to in a deal to raise the debt ceiling. Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), however, have objected to appropriations bills with spending levels higher than those contained in the House-passed budget resolution.
The budget allotted $139 billion for the bill that funds HHS along with labor and education programs. The draft released Thursday would cost $153 billion.
The draft also includes several policy riders, such as cutting off federal funding for NPR and the “Race to the Top” education program."
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5/23/11, "The Political Class continues to strongly oppose repeal, while most Mainstream voters favor it. A plurality (47%) of those in the Mainstream still think repeal is likely;
- 74% of Political Class voters disagree."...
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4/26/11, "Supreme Court allows ObamaCare to metastasize," American Spectator
"This protracted journey will allow Obamacare to embed itself in our health care system so deeply that, by the time the Court deigns to hear one of the challenges, it may be impossible to safely extract the tumor."...
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1/27/11, "How to Limit the Damage from Obamacare—Pulling It Out Weed by Weed," Ernest Istook, Heritage
"The massive 2,700-page health care law is deliberately designed to make defunding and dismantlement difficult. Although original estimates reported that it created 159 new government agencies,[3] later studies show even more, but that an exact count is impossible due to the complexity of the law. The new law also attempts to bypass the normal appropriations process, another feature that makes defunding more difficult. By making advance appropriations for tens of billions of dollars up to and beyond the year 2020, these provisions of Obamacare seek to take spending decisions away from the current Congress and from future Congresses and Presidents. Although Obamacare was not pitched to the public as a mandatory spending entitlement, the details of the legislation reveal an intent to block any future Congress from controlling Obamacare’s spending."...
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5/22/11, "Has "ObamaCare" Begun The Undoing Of The Republican Party?" Bill Sher, California Progress Report
Makes sense to me. ed.
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8/8/11, "The Obama administration now admits Obamacare will not reduce health care costs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a report last month indicating health care costs will rise faster under Obamacare than they would have in its absence."...
8/8/11, "ObamaCare or America?" Dr. Milton R. Wolf, Washington Times
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